How effective collaboration strategies build successful teams

A team’s success lies in how effectively its members collaborate to get the job done. If your team is working on a large, complicated project, you need the expertise and skills of your teammates to problem-solve and creatively tackle every aspect of the work. While effective communication helps build a team, effective collaboration reflects real teamwork. The result is a team that accomplishes the project goals successfully and on time. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether your team works remotely or is located in a physical office space — effective collaboration strategies and tools are the most integral part of your work environment. 

Effective collaboration strategies to improve teamwork

Effective collaboration starts with effective communication. Real-time communication is particularly important if your team is spread across different time zones. Managers and leaders need to provide a communication platform for their team members to exchange ideas and explore solutions. Not only does this increase productivity, but it also helps keep team morale high. Here are some of the most effective collaboration strategies that go hand-in-hand with productive communication between team members.  

Build a sense of community

Successful teams are built on mutual trust and cooperation. When your teammates feel a sense of community in the workplace, it leads to more effective teamwork. In a physical office space, it’s easy to build a sense of community over water cooler chats, coffee breaks, and team lunches. But when working remotely, your team needs to be able to interact often. This can be done through chat applications that are designed to keep teams connected in real-time. A sense of community, in turn, harbors feelings of collective ownership and accountability. Though it’s common for leaders and project managers to be responsible for managing projects, empowering your team members to be decision-makers allows them to be more accountable when working towards project goals.  

Support flexible and focused communication

Flexible and focused communication is the essence of team collaboration. While working with a large team, there is always a risk of important conversations and ideas getting lost. Dedicated chat channels for these conversations help keep track of chat history while sharing relevant project information and resources. Scheduling all-hands meetings and team video hangouts can also ensure that everybody is on the same page regarding the progress of the project. 

Support teammates’ strengths and work preferences

A flexible workplace inspires team members to be productive while working on schedules that suit them the best. Each of your team members has a unique skill set and different working style. As a team, sharing individual skills helps in solving critical project-related problems, especially when working on tight deadlines. To create such a collaborative environment, you need to be equipped to support your team member’s individual strengths and work preferences. 

Socialize to improve and evolve collaboration

Team bonding is one of the keys to facilitating effective collaboration. Spending time with coworkers after work hours or celebrating their personal successes and milestones can go a long way in building team spirit. Appreciating your team members’ contributions and recognizing their efforts in accomplishing project goals helps increase overall engagement and motivation. 

Empower creativity and innovation

Effective collaboration is only possible when team members are not getting overwhelmed with routine administrative work that can bog down their schedules and negatively impact their creativity. To encourage innovation and creativity at work, you need to provide your team with time, space, and a sense of freedom. Micromanaging teammates will only lead to decreasing overall productivity and wasting everyone’s time. With the help of project management software, you can organize and streamline workflow, resources, and communication. While it provides creative support to your team members, it also allows them to be accountable for their assigned tasks. 

In a rush to build a successful team while implementing these strategies, managers sometimes resort to implementing multiple collaboration tools. While selecting cloud-based platforms, chat applications, or task management tools for streamlining workflow, the learning curve is often overlooked. Switching to a different tool means a change that your team might take longer to adjust to. As your project and team grow, a collaboration tool you are using might turn out to be incompatible and not support the changing requirements. And toggling between multiple tools can put additional stress on your team. This is why you need a flexible, integrated project management platform with easy-to-use features that increases your team’s overall productivity.    

An integrated platform for implementing effective collaboration strategies

Effective collaboration does not just mean successfully completing the project on time. Creating meaningful connections with your team members helps you understand team dynamics more fully and will enable your team to better utilize their innate skills and talents.

To support your team’s collaboration, you need an all-in-one platform that provides the features to streamline workflow while facilitating real-time conversations. Transitioning to a new platform does not necessarily mean disrupting your team’s way of working or requiring them to learn new features. Apart from offering flexibility to accommodate different requirements, the platform should also provide ways to integrate the collaboration tools that your team already uses. At the end of the day, a smooth transition to a collaborative workspace means a happier and more successful team. 

With Flow, you can support effective collaboration strategies to build a successful team. Our powerful, built-in communication tools and easy-to-use task management features keep your team connected while they chase project deadlines. Start your free trial today!